She Who Dreams (Revised)
by BadWolfGirl01
Summary: Revised version. Rose Tyler was in reality a chameleon arched Time Lady known as Arkytior or the Dreamer. After Tentoo's death, she opens her locket and returns to the Doctor at the End of Time-and she won't be left behind again. Dreamverse #1, season 5 and Children of Earth rewrite; co-written with anarchitect for first four chapters. About 34 chapters.
1. Not Just A Locket

**I have, in concert with thevoiceoflightcity on AO3, began to rewrite/edit these early chapters. Edited chapters will be marked as such.**

"Doctor, look at this."

The being sometimes known as the Doctor, legal name John Smith-now-Tyler, half-human clone of the last Time Lord, comes awake with a start. His Rose is sitting upright in bed, fingering something on a long golden chain, knees curled close to her chest.

Messy blonde hair streaked with silver drapes over bare shoulders as she stares at the thing in her hands; he drags himself half-upright, suddenly concerned. "Yes, love?"

She doesn't look at him, hiding behind a curtain of hair; holds out the thing on the chain instead. " _Look._ "

He blinks at the indistinct object for a moment, and then his gaze slides back to the delicate dusky lines of his wife. It's dark, but his eyes are still mostly Time Lord, and besides he can always see her. "Rose, are you alright?"

She turns toward him, finally; her eyes glint wide in the twilight. "Can't you see it?" There's a waver to her voice. "It's the locket. My locket. I've been wearing it since - as long as I can remember." She makes a funny broken noise. "I don't think I can remember ever taking it _off._ "

"Rose," he says, and then his hands are in hers, signaling telepathic [comfort] through the skin-on-skin contact. (Not as strong as a real Time Lord, but it's enough for him-enough for both of them) "Rose, it's all right. It's just a dream." They both have bad dreams sometimes - sometimes she still wakes up in a panic, reaching desperately for the dimension cannon, convinced that she's still stuck jumping from reality to reality and never being able to rest - looking for him. And he, well, it wasn't really _him,_ but he still has the War. She helps him, and he helps her; they make a good team, that way. "You're safe."

She makes a wordless frustrated noise, thrusts the object at him again. "No, it's _not_ a dream, can't you _see_ it?"

He frowns. "It's just a locket."

"No it's not," she repeats, almost desperate now. "It's got to be - a, a perception filter, or something. _Look_ at it. _Really_ look." And she squeezes his hand, sending back a quiet scared [please] through the telepathic channel he keeps open for her.

He looks.

He -

He blinks, and takes a careful breath, the beating of his single heart suddenly loud in his ears in a way it hasn't been for decades. "Rose…"

"I know," she says, but her voice is unsure.

The thing she's holding in her hand - hard to look at still, but getting better, as if the perception filter's slowly fading - is small and round and made of a heavy golden metal, covered in delicate circular engravings, lines and angles and clockwork-like gears intersecting across the surface. Even to his halfling timesense, it glows with pure artron.

It's a fob watch.

"Is it...?" she asks, her voice shaking just a little, as he takes it out of her hand, handling it carefully.

"Yeah," he says, slowly. "A chameleon arch. You remember I told you about the Family of Blood - with Martha?"

"Of course I do," she responds, hand still holding tight to his. "There's a - a Time Lord in there. All the memories. All the regenerations." She swallows.

"A Time Lady," he corrects softly, and looks up at his Rose, eyes unreadable. "And it's yours."

"I'm a Time Lady," Rose says, after a moment. She giggles, a little deliriously. "Right. Okay." She takes a shaky breath. "And if I open the watch. I'll remember?"

The Doctor nods. "You - you'll be the person you were then again. You'll remember Rose, but you won't be her." Something flickers in his eyes, for a moment. "Not really. If you open the watch."

She looks up suddenly, eyes urgent. "Did you know? When you - the other you - found me? Did you know I was from Gallifrey, too?"

He shakes his head, and then he shakes it again, an edge of joy creeping around the shock. "No," he says, delighted, and then there's a smile on his face. "No - I didn't know - but you survived, Rose, somebody else made it past the Moment - you made it." There's something like relief there, too; the weight of a thousand thousand lives lifted by just a little bit. He pulls her close, radiating [happiness] through their linked hands "Somebody else survived. I'm not alone."

"You never were alone," she whispers, then pauses. "Do I - " she starts, and chokes, and he freezes - pulling back. "Do I do it now?"

He hesitates for a single moment, and then he shakes his head, voice soft. "Not if you don't want to, love."

"But if I'm a Time Lord-Lady-too," she says shakily, the words spilling out fast and jerky. "Shouldn't I - if you - "

"Rose," the Docotr interjects, firmly, grinning that same old idiot's grin. "I'd love you if you were a human or a Time Lady or a - giant squid, alright? If you want to, and not sooner."

"But," she tries, and now there really is fear there. "You said - Professor Yana was good, too - what if I'm one of the bad ones?"

The Doctor laughs, softly, happily. "Oh, no. I can read the inscription, Rose. And you're not." He whispers it, rocking her back and forth. "You are very, very good."

[=|=]

She's not crying.

She's not screaming.

She's not bleeding.

That's the worst part, of course.

Rose Marion Tyler rocks back and forth on the same bed in the same room but alone, and the sheets don't even smell like him. She tried. He always said that Time Lords have no scent, but it wasn't true, or not really; there's that faint hint of sparks, something like electricity and dust and sunset, that peculiar taste that was only _him._ And it's gone.

It was a Torchwood mission. Predictably. Of course. He threw himself into a conflict with three different alien species, always at the center of everything, somehow holding everybody frozen with sheer force of will - oh, there were other agents, but _nobody_ could ever do that, that magic he does with words and symbols and empty hands. He spins through the room, talking so fast your brain can barely keep up, thinking even faster. He finds a way to save everybody. He walks the line, a tightrope so high and yet he dances so easy, running circles around every other mind in the room. He was immortal - maybe not literally, not anymore, but everyone believed it anyway.

You can't kill a legend; you can't kill a force of nature; you can't kill a trail of artron sparks. You can't kill the Doctor. The Doctor never dies.

And then when all three species stood down, when this universe's Shadow Proclamation had been called, the refugees waiting on their towering miles-long island ships parked in the Pacific, UNIT negotiating. When all three leaders laid their weapons down. When everything was going to be alright, as always.

The Doctor grinned, still standing on that pedestal-like engine tower in the middle of the ship's cargo hold - and then said "In that case, I think I'm going to - "

He never finished the sentence; he blacked out instead, and would have fallen the fifty feet to the cargo floor if she hadn't caught him. And that's when everybody figure out that at some point during the whole adventure he'd been stabbed in the side with a two-inch wide sword, and never bothered to mention it.

"I'm dying," he told her, in the hospital bed. She was still crying then. She could still cry then. But he was smiling, and he looked so exactly the same - he'd aged a little, more than the Time Lord Doctor ever had, a few grey hairs around the edge - that it _hurt._ They were going to live forever, together, and die in each other's arms.

"No you're not," she tried to say, but couldn't; choking on the words. He knew it anyway.

"I am," he said. That was all he said. "Rose - "

"D - d - " and then she gave up, squeezed his hand tighter instead. [i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love]

"Rose," he whispered, still smiling, and then he coughs (the doctors say he's punctured a lung and it's too close to that one heart and even surgery might not help the doctors say his systems are too alien and too unstable, a barely-functional patchwork being made of two races that couldn't be more different no matter how similar they look, the doctors say they'll try but they don't know). [rose, your locket.]

She tried to respond, but all that came out was a tangle of raw emotion; she can't quite manage sentences, even after all these years of practice.

[when i'm gone - he needs you.]

[who?] and [i love you] and [don't go]

[the doctor,] he said, and coughed again. [the…. real one. he needs you. he needs… to know he's not alone]

" _You're_ the real Doctor," she snapped, and it came out harsher than she meant but she doesn't have time to care. "I won't leave you. I won't _ever_ leave you. " She took a desperate breath. "I'll save you there must be some way I _will_ save you - "

He couldn't laugh, not really, but the bubble of simple joyful [amusement] stopped her anyway. [Oh, Rose, my Rose.] He blinked, once, eyes unfocusing. [You already _did._ ] A faint, curve of a smile. [So many times.]

His eyes slipped shut; the last thing she got was one signal so strong it shorted her mind out for a moment - vision gone, grief gone, nothing but an endless timeless space made of pure [love.]

They wheeled him into surgery. He never woke up again.

And now she's sitting here, wondering what being a Time Lord - Lady - is like. Do immortals have to feel? Will she care about the Doctor? Does she want to care about the Doctor?

He's still out there, though, isn't he?

If she's a Time Lady, can she find him?

All she wants is to hear him say 'Run,' again.

He won't replace _her_ Doctor - nothing could ever do that - but if he needs her. If he still wants her. There's nothing for her left here - Mum and Dad are both gone, Tony's married the cute superspy from UNIT, his name's Viktor or something, and they're living on the other side of the world, she doesn't know anybody else from this universe, not well.

She clutches the watch close to her chest, staring at the almost-hypnotic under-the-skin-of-the-universe golden glow of it, wondering what dying feels like.

Rose Marian Tyler screams, and throws the locket at the wall hard.

 _No. NO_. Take a breath; imagine his hands in hers. _It's going to be okay._ It isn't dying; it's just being someone else, someone who doesn't hurt like this. It's okay to grieve, it's okay to be scared, but the other Doctor needs her, somewhere.

She rocks back and forth for a little longer, and maybe she finally starts to cry.

And then she goes to pick it up.

She writes three notes before she goes. One of them's for the Torchwood operatives, so they know where she's gone, in case the new her doesn't feel like sticking around. One of them's for herself, after she's changed, to make sure that the new her remembers. And one of them's for the Doctor, from the _human_ her, so that even if it is like dying she can say goodbye.

She puts the first note on her bed and shoves it against the wall, making space - she's not sure how this works and she doesn't want to accidentally incinerate anything if this is like the Doctor's regenerations. She considers the second notes for a moment, and then she pins it to the wall in front of her, so it'll be the first thing she sees either way. The third note she puts in the pocket of her Torchwood leather jacket, and hopes for the best.

She stands straight. She holds her head high. She takes one last long slow breath.

The watch clicks open.

And then there is _light._


	2. Dreamer

**This is almost pure anarchitect/lightcity content as evidenced by the length and the amount of EU references. Welcome to the flashbacks chapter; we wanted to split it but couldn't find a way, so it's easily twice as long as the longest chapters will theoretically be (I plan that chapters will usually be ~3k words; this one is like 8k?). I hope you enjoy!**

 **The Dreamer**

The first thing she notices about Theta Sigma is that he's not staring at her.

She's used to being stared at; she's Rassilon's daughter, after all, born of the reLoomed founder of Gallifreyan society; the Presidency isn't technically a hereditary position, even if it functions like one, but if it was she'd be heir. She's Arkytior - Rose - a Prydonian Time Lady of the highest order, and she's been stared at since she was a chronarch in the Capitol. The Academy isn't usually any different.

Except that he isn't.

He's a native, a Cadonin kid, as rural as it gets, with a stupid grin and a mop of hair so blonde it's almost white. What is he, Lungbarrow? One of those ancient stagnant Oldblood ones that still actually have a House to go with the name, anyway - which is notable, if only because he doesn't seem stagnant at all, bouncy and cheerful and somewhat ridiculous. It's the only reason she knows his (nick)name; because he's always getting in trouble - wasn't he involved in that scheme to probability-shift all of Borusa's underclothes two units to the right, too?

The dark-haired Newblood sitting next to him, on the other hand, _is_ staring, but it's a cool appraising kind of stare. As if he's sizing her up. She gives him her best Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon glare, but all he does is raise one annoyingly-perfect eyebrow and say something to the oblivious Theta.

Who looks up from his metaphysics homework (something to do with the fifth wall, by the look of it,) still talking at a hundred miles per hour about something she can't hear - and focuses on her.

She gives him the glare, too.

And he _waves_.

The Newblood - she thinks he's Cadonin too, probably an Oakdown - drags one long pale hand down his face long-sufferingly as the Cadonin kid jumps upright far too happily, and starts -

It takes her really far too long to realize he's coming toward her.

Except he is, quite distinctly, and all she can really do is stare open-mouthed as he sits down across from her, dragging the Newblood along by one scandalously ungloved hand - she nearly double takes, but the Heir of Rassilon wouldn't do anything so undignified.

"Hi," he says, cheerfully. She doesn't think anybody's ever greeted her that informally since - possibly ever. "I'm Theta," he announces; "Theta Sigma, this is Koschei, nice to meet you."

She can only stare.

"What's your name?" he prompts helpfully. The Newblood - Koschei - looks even more exasperated.

"Arkytior," she says, after a moment. "I'm... Arkytior."

"Rose," he repeats, and grins. "Nice name."

She blinks, uncertain. "Thank you?"

[=|=]

"You're bringing _Rassilon's daughter_ into Low Town?"

They've all piled into Ushas's room - Ushas of House Lightslorn, one of the most brilliant biochemists the Academy has seen in a while, and therefore with her own room and attached lab. Apparently she's another Cadonin, which is how Theta and Koschei know her in the first place, and part of the weird little clique they all call the Deca.

It also seems that her role in every adventure is to sigh heavily, announce how mind-blowing idiotic it is, and then drag them all out of trouble again by their collars.

"It'll be fun," Theta declares.

"She doesn't even have to disconnect from the Matrix to keep it from tracking her, she's got practically Presidential privileges, she can just _tell_ it to let her in," Koschei explains - not quite as bouncy as Theta, but grinning, too, now.

"Last time you went to Low Town you picked a fight with six shobo'gans at once and then I had to rescue you in a stolen skimmer," Ushas announces, utterly deadpan.

"Which is why we're asking you to come," Koschei puts in.

"Please," Theta wheedles.

"She says she's never even seen anything but the Citadel and the Academy - "

" - and it's not like we're taking her Outside, it's still technically the Capitol - "

" - and we've been telling her about Low Town for years it's only fair - "

" - and that trick with the flowers in Prof. Calia's room last span was even her idea - "

" - and besides she's not actually nearly as snobby as she acts - "

"What?" Arkytior interjects, mostly as a reflex. Koschei and Theta utterly ignore her.

Ushas projects a distant [ignore them, they don't mean any disrespect] in her direction, still staring judgmentally at the two boys.

Arkytior manages not to jump; on top of everything else, Ushas is the strongest non-timeship-bonded telepath Arkytior's ever met, and she's still not used to the clarity of projection the other Time Lady can manage. [i'm not offended] she sends back along the same channel, and then, surprising even herself [do i really act like that?]

Ushas looks up; the boys ignore it, having devolved into arguing about skimmer piloting. One eyebrow goes up, but it's almost a mark of respect. [sometimes. but most capitol-dwellers wouldn't even have asked that question.]

[i wanted to know,] Arkytior tries, with a sort of mental shrug. And the signal Ushas sends back isn't exactly a smile, but it's somewhere in that direction.

"Right," she announces, "but _I_ do the piloting, please and thank you."

Theta takes this in stride; grins at Arkytior, a friendly kind of grin, and then he grabs her gloved hand and pulls her down the corridor, Koschei right behind them.

She stumbles along after him, and even though neither of them are powerful enough telepaths to initiate contact through standard Academy gloves, all she can focus on is his hand in hers.

[=|=]

A decade or so after that, he takes her home.

Not House Lungbarrow, but the Cadonin hills above it, and Mount Lung itself above it. They walk up slowly, the transduction barrier painting the sky a featureless black, glowing very slightly orange around the edges. He tells her a long story about a hermit who lives on top, who showed him a flower and told him the secret of how it's all connected; she's not sure if she believes him, exactly, but it's a nice story either way.

He doesn't talk about Lungbarrow, or when he was a chronarch; he never does. She suspects that his House didn't exactly treat him well. She's heard stories, too, off little things Koschei and Ushas have said - it seems like Theta's not exactly normal in more ways than one, that maybe something went wrong with his Looming. That maybe he was born... different, and that would explain the way he talks sometimes, like he was alive in Founder's Times, the way he makes references to things he really shouldn't know from a standard Matrix connection, the way he doesn't seem quite as present in the local timestream as others.

He won't tell her where they're going; she goes along with it anyway, if only because he took off his collar and most of the heavier bits of his robes halfway up the slope, and when he pulls her up the path his fingers are bare against hers. They're both shielded, of course, but a buzz of emotion gets through anyway; little pings of joy against her skull.

They stop, eventually, on a bare section of slope; she can see the Academy glowing artron-gold on the horizon, Cadon stretching out in front of them. The Capitol's barely a fourth of a planet away - she could be there in less than no time, if she had a timeship - but she's never felt further from her father, never felt freer. He talks to her about travelling the universe, and here she could believe it.

"Maybe," she starts; he rolls over to look at her, suddenly attentive. She tries to find words. "Maybe, you could - I mean, when we're out of the Academy - run away and see the world."

"Be a renegade, you mean," he says, uncertainly.

"...Yes."

He stares for a moment, and then he laughs; high and bright and joyful. She's never met anyone quite as _alive_ as Theta Sigma of Lungbarrow. "Oh, that'd show them," he declares, with satisfaction. "Borusa and Quences and everyone else. Yeah." And he looks at her, and he's still holding her hand. "Maybe we could. Go together."

She smiles, in the a dark; can't seem to stop smiling.

And then he goes silent, suddenly, and points at a glint of light in the barrier-dark sky - " _There there there_ look - "

She watches it open-mouthed; the transduction barrier sliding open, slowly fading out - and behind it the sky isn't dark at all, it is full of _diamonds._

"It opens to let merchant timeships through," he says, with some satisfaction. "They don't put the schedules on the wider Matrix, but they never change them, and you get the pattern if you watch for long enough."

"The stars," she whispers.

"Yeah." He quiets. "I said I'd show you them, didn't I?"

"I could have just found the records," she points out after a moment, still in awe, "I have clearance for everything - "

"But then it wouldn't have been a surprise," he protests, and then she can't take it anymore; she turns, tearing her eyes off the sky to look at him. And slowly, very slowly, she edges her shields down.

He gasps when he realizes, and then he makes a funny strangled noise, and says "You're not watching the stars - "

"I have better things to look at, you idiot," she tells him, and kisses him.

[=|=]

The next bit you can probably guess.

He's Oldblood, from some dead-end House in the middle of nowhere; she's Rassilon's daughter, neither Newblood nor Oldblood but almost Pythian, with an inheritance the size of the known universe and a prophecy to her name.

They're found out. They're separated.

She doesn't like to think about that day.

After that, she's tutored at the Capitol; Theta stays at the Academy, with Koschei and Ushas and the rest of the Deca. She doesn't see him again for a long time. And even then, it's nothing more than short glimpses - in the halls of the Panopticon - and then he turns away again, turns away from her, and she wonders what they told him to break him like that. She wonders what her father did. But she's a real Time Lady now, Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon and everything that comes with it, and she can't spend her days pining over a high school crush.

There are rumours, about a freak and throwback, a Cadonin kid who passed the Academy with 51% and the disconcerting impression that he'd cut it that close just to see if he could, wandering around. She doesn't listen. (She pretends she doesn't listen.) (She pretends she doesn't watch for him, doesn't analyze those little glimpses she does get - )

(Is he all right? Is he still with the Deca? Is he happy?)

And then one day, a couple centuries - could be seven, could be four, could be fifteen; it doesn't really matter - on, it happens. She tries to access his files through the Matrix, for the thousandth time - and gets an error message.

Except it's not the usual no-clearance error.

It says _the Time Lord formerly known as, among other aliases, Theta Sigma, has been erased from the Matrix._

She knows what that means, and when she digs through other records she figures it out, piece by piece. Theta's finally done what he always wanted to do - back at the Academy, the way he used to talk about the stars, all the [longing] radiating from him. Wanting something he'd never even known. He ran.

He stole a museum-piece Type 40 timeship and went to see the universe. Without her.

(Somebody says he took his little chronarch Loomling with him, the one called Arkytior too - and she believes it, because he always said he didn't want to travel alone.)

And even though she has a state-of-the-art type 74 bonded to her, hers alone for always, she doesn't quite dare follow him.

The funny thing is that she doesn't care.

What's not caring? It's as easy as snapping your fingers, as turning your head, as bowing your neck. It's as easy as letting go. She is a Time Lady, and she doesn't care about Outsiders and renegades.

She tells herself that, and sometimes she even believes it.

[=|=]

"What is it," Rassilon asks finally, staring at the temporal charts, at the Matrix simulation codes. His lackeys crowd around and make vague noises; Arkytior stands in the background, dark hair falling carefully in front of her face, in perfect Prydonian red-orange.

There's a crash as the Lord High President and Founder of Gallifrey stands up, throwing his chair back almost violently. (It arcs straight toward one of the Cardinals; they don't dodge, but the chair does, quickly vaporizing itself at an automatic telepathic signal from the Matrix.) "What _is_ it?" he roars, pointing at the field of distortion.

"We don't know, sir."

It's Lady Romana speaking - Romanadvoratrelundar, who would have been President if it weren't for Rassilon, who was a renegade for a while, with a sardonic smile and a true Prydonian head for politics. Who travelled with Theta's, except he's calling himself the Doctor now, a renegade's not-name title; replacement for a term long lost. (She can't remember his real name anymore either. Erasure from the Matrix means erasure from the mind of every non-renegade connected Time Lord, and despite what she dreams of at night that's still her.)

(In her head, she calls herself the Dreamer. That's who she would have been, if she followed Theta into the wide wide universe and lost her name too; that's who she should have been. There's a little irony there too, of course. He's the Doctor; he heals, he fixes, he makes things better. And she only dreams of it...)

"How can we not _know?_ " Rassilon cries, sullen. "This is Gallifrey, is it not? Home of the same people who _created_ Time itself, the first and only race to speak to the Menti Celesti on Their own territory, who _rule_ reality? The same people I created, when I tore the Pythia's hearts out and spilled Her blood on the sand? How can it be that my Matrix can't foresee this?"

Romana shrugs. It's a fluid slippery motion, and entirely an alien one; Arkytior would bet one of her lives that the other Time Lady learned it from the Doctor, or one of the mortals the Doctor runs with nowadays. "The War King claimed it was - "

"I refuse to listen to that upstart," Rassilon snaps. "He thinks he can take the Presidency from me? A _renegade?_ What was it he called himself?"

"The Master," Romana says drily. "But his testimony's the only information we have on the War at large - "

"It's not a War," Rassilon growls. "There's no evidence for a War. Who would dare oppose Gallifrey?"

Romana only shrugs again.

But Arkytior's watching for it, and she can feel the signal ripple outwards into the Matrix - because Rassilon may be the founder of Gallifreyan society, but he's a petulant child and a figurehead.

It's the Lady Romana who's in charge, and everybody knows it.

She wonders if it really is a War. She can feel it too, now; the coming Darkness boiling in the worldline, in the timelines - in _everyone's_ timelines. Koschei must be closer tied into it than most, if he can already say what it's going to be. Or maybe he has another source of information.

She wonders if the Doctor can feel it.

She turns away, and she ignores the complex dance of pandimensional politics in the Panopticon hallways, and she still doesn't care. Nothing hurts. Nothing feels like anything at all.

[=|=]

She's there the day the War King comes back. Still Koschei's dark eyes, still the Master's crazed intelligence, but _coherent_ now; elegant and manipulative and always one step ahead. She's there the day they throw Rassilon aside and crown Koschei king of reality in his place. She's there the day Romana is inducted as general and imperiatrix, leading Gallifrey's newly created forces out into the universe - the War Queen.

She's there the day the War breaks on Dronid, and wipes the planet out of history entirely; she's there to watch the symbolism-ships of the various forces clash in pseudometaphorical dimensions roughly three planes above what is commonly thought of as reality. She's there for the First Wave, and the Second, and the Third, until they all blend together; soldiers and timeships and hybrid monsters pouring out of the War Looms and into the Darkness. She doesn't fight, not really and not for long; she stays in the shadows of the Panopticon and watches it all begin to fall apart.

Everybody ignores her, mostly. She's the daughter of a figurehead and keeper of the legacy of a history that no longer matters. She can't fight, not really; she does her duty like any Time Lord, but she doesn't go into the front lines the way some do. She's bonded to a TARDIS, but that's becoming increasingly less notable, and it's only an type 74; nothing _special._ She watches them from a distance. She waits.

She dreams.

She's there when Compassion the timeship comes to meet the War King, the mark of the Doctor's timeline and the Doctor's TARDIS clear on her steel skin. She's there when the regen-inf are pioneered and brought into combat - burning through their regenerations one after the other, twisting and changing until they've been reformatted into something that can survive in the broken-glass flux-timespace of flat War realities - something that isn't even recognizable as Gallifreyan anymore. She's there when the media-lived Remote first start to show up in the Matrix databases (the server that holds history in place) and when they start to disappear. For the experiments in anti-time and subsequent birth of the Could've-Been-King - the Neverweres dragged out of their never-was-reality to fight and shriek and die. For the creation of the Nightmare Child, and everything that followed.

Through it all, through every battle, every twisted horror and new experiment, she drifts aimlessly through the shadows of the Capitol, alone, so alone. She's Prydonian, she knows politics, she knows _people_ , and so she stays quiet and lets them all forget her. And dreams (of the past of the future of what could've been and never was-but most of all, she dreams of freedom).

She's there, more than fifty years into the War - not that it's that simple anymore, with how many alternate timelines have been produced and discarded, with how many different realities all of them exist in at once, now - when Theta comes back.

Except it's not Theta. And it's not the Doctor anymore, either. It's the Warrior who walks into the Panopticon with a tangle of broken timelines so dark she can barely see him at the center of it, less a _person_ than a sentient time-space event of unimaginable complexity. That otherness that was there even in the Academy, when they were both young - those little strange inconsistencies, never quite normal, always just under the surface - in the open, now. A thing with ancient eyes and an alien smile, a force of nature, the Oncoming Storm. And if Theta's still there under it all, she can't see him.

She's there.

She's there.

She's only there.

She watches him walk past, and if he only looked at her - if he only thought of her - she would go to him, she would do more than dream.

But he doesn't, and she doesn't, and the War goes on.

[=|=]

She's never been in a War timeship before.

Oh, she's travelled a little, of course; piloting was a class like any other at the Academy, and occasionally they would venture into Outer Time, to learn to bridge the gap between realities. She remembers the Medusa Cascade, especially; that was in the short golden time before she and Theta were discovered, and they managed to get themselves partnered to the same ship - with Ushas and Koschei and Millennia and Rallon, for the full six pilots - and they spent the whole time holding hands and watching the stars. But that was the old generation, the weaponless generation, the nonlinear-sentient, the pureblood timeships - type 60, 65, 70-form at the very most. Her type 74, for all Her beauty, hasn't travelled further than a couple light-centuries in the entire time they've been bonded, and can barely even keep from capsizing in the stormy seas of the War-torn reality. And even then She preferred to keep to the default silver cylinder used by all pre-Compassion TT capsules.

Whereas _this_ one is a War-born timeship looks like a Time Lady in full ceremonial armor-regalia, a perfect imitation of life, and the Remote-hybridised circuits in her core dragged just far enough into linear time that she can act like one, too. One of the million children of Compassion. A perfect imitation, until she smiles and her face cracks open top to bottom, a divide wide enough to walk through, and behind that door - well.

Bigger on the inside, after all.

Arkytior stays in the back of the console room and watches the six pilots at their stations. From inside, it looks like any other machine, and she's not sure why that bothers her so much. Maybe it's the hybridization of it, the lesser-species-biodata in the mix. It's only natural to be uncomfortable around such a blatantly half-breed thing.

It occurs to her that the timeship can probably hear her; she hides behind layers of shields and tries not to think at all.

After all, the only other option is thinking about what she's being sent to face, and that's not an option at all.

They arrive faster than she was expecting; she's ushered out into the wider (well, still only infinite, but it's a larger infinity) environs of a Time Station anchored to a well-known fixed point, close to the planet where he's supposedly gone to ground.

Nobody's explained to her _why_ he's gone, yet. The Matrix summons hit in the middle of the night, with an almost-painful spark, marked with the highest clearance possible - the Presidential seal, twice over - and the sheer _weight_ of it sent her into respiratory bypass for a few moments. The power of it; an order marked with the double-sigil of War King and War Queen, and not a thing that can be ignored.

She made it to the throne room (a new creation, the War King's idea, while the Queen supposedly despises it, took the drab-in-comparison President's offices instead) quickly, because she had to. It dragged her down Panopticon hallways gloveless and shoeless and hair in disarray, but she hasn't cared about the opinions of the Capitol Time Lords since they took Theta from her, and besides they can feel the Matrix-order hanging over her as well as anyone else. They know.

Koschei - the King, she must stop thinking of him as Koschei - smiled at her, and told her a mistake had been made, that the Doctor needed her. (He said _Doctor._ She wonders how naive he thinks she is.) The Imperatrix Romana looked coldly furious, but didn't speak; there was something like guilt in her eyes. (Arkytior caught talk of roses and children and power and betrayal, before she entered the room; she suspects, but she isn't sure.)

So she takes a different timeship down to the surface of the planet, and she walks out with her head half high, and she watches it fade away and pretends she isn't scared.

The timeship's eyes blank out just before it disappears, as the block-transfer shell dismantles itself in preparation for the raw energy of the Vortex.

And then she's alone of the rocky empty surface of a place called Quiescia.

(Not alone. Not really.)

(Because the Warrior is somewhere, somewhere close, hiding, and she needs to bring him back.)

 _We need him,_ said the War King, and smiled Koschei's sardonic self-deprecating smile, but there is madness behind it now. _You know how important he is to the War, of course. We need him, and we have reason to believe that you might be able to coax him out of hiding. And if not…._

(he shrugs)

 _Well, we'll have to think of something, won't we?_

She swallows, and starts walking.

Night falls, after a while.

 _I wanted to show you the stars._

 _If he goes rogue -_

 _It was you who brought the halfling into it in the first place -_ (and the War Queen holds steady voice like ice) - _it was necessary, the way the War is going - if she inherited even a fraction of what he can do -_

 _she's mine too,_ (koschei-not-koschei snarls it, the words like acid) _don't forget it, and you knew it, and you never even told me_

And then she turns a corner, tired, and almost walks straight into a large blue box.

The Dreamer stumbles back, hands over her mouth, taking it in - obviously a timeship, obviously ancient, a type 40 by the look of it, and that exterior can only mean one thing.

It's _his_ timeship. The famous TARDIS. The broken-down museum piece he travelled in, still defenseless, still with only the most rudimentary of shields, now turned into the most terrifying of War-time weapons. He's here.

( _police box pull to open_ she mustn't think she mustn't panic)

She takes a breath. She holds her head high.

She knocks on the door.

Nothing -

Nothing happens.

Arkytior cocks her head; unsure, wary - no, scratch that, not wary, she is _terrified_. And not even because this is technically War-territory, because she's utterly defenseless, but because she hasn't said a word to Theta since Rassilon's personal guards tore them apart and now she's expected to bring him back and she's not even sure if she can she's not even sure if he'll know her and she's panicking and she mustn't panic she needs to

"Breathe."

It's only millennia of Panopticon-rigid decorum embedded in her spine that stops her from screaming.

The _presence_ behind her withdraws, sudden, careful. There is dark around its edges, the feel of broken glass, the lightning-edged smell of Storm.

She turns.

The Warrior stands silhouetted against the sunset, and she doesn't understand how she can have not seen him, the bloody edges of his timelines are so clear against the silence of the sky. (Why is it so quiet here, if this is War-time? Why can't she smell the Enemy? Why can she barely feel Outer Time at all?)

All they can do, for a moment, is stare.

"Hello, Arkytior," he says, after a while. His voice is rough, as if he hasn't spoken in a long time, but it's soft too; quiet in the dusty sunset air.

"Theta," she whispers.

He hesitates, for a moment; she can't see his face, can't feel him behind the Storm. And slowly, he shakes his head. "No."

"Theta - " she tries again, heart in her throat and so close and so far away.

He cuts her off this time. "No." His voice is gentle, but there's the hiss-crackle distortion of anti-time running under it. "I'm sorry, Arkytior. Theta isn't here anymore."

There's silence for a while.

"Oh," she says, her voice tiny. "...Oh."

And then there's nothing else to say, nothing else she can ever say, so she gives up. Slumps back against the unnaturally-cold surface of the timeship behind her, sliding to the ground, pulls her knees and still-bare feet up to her chest and sobs like a broken thing.

Eventually, she can feel him move; she's not sure she cares. (She's not sure she _can,_ after all these years of ice.) He sits down next to her, not quite close enough to touch, watching the sun sink toward the horizon

Eventually, she lifts her head and watches too.

It's him who speaks first, when it starts getting dark, toneless. "...They sent you to bring me back. Didn't they."

"Yes." There's no real point in hiding it. "Why did you run?"

"Arkytior - " He cuts himself off, sudden. "The other Arkytior. Susan. Theta's - my granddaughter."

(Roses, and betrayal.)

"I left her on Earth in their twenty-second century. I thought she would be safe, that the War couldn't touch her. If she never - if she never became a part of it, she could have stayed safe."

"And she didn't?"

"Romana brought her back." There is no trace of emotion in his voice. "Because of what I can do. On the possibility that she could help turn the tide."

She considers this, for a moment. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing." He blinks, mechanical. "The War doesn't give back what it's taken. There's no going back now. I could kill her, but somebody would always bring her back."

"Too valuable to leave in peace," she says. "Like you. Because of you."

"Yes."

He turns away, suddenly, looking off across the rocky plain, and when he speaks there's a trace of anger in it. "You shouldn't be here. This is Outer Time. It's too dangerous, there's too much of the War here, you haven't been trained."

She shrugs. "It was a Presidential order."

"Because of me," he growls. "Yes. I know. I wasn't going to _run,_ anyway, I've given up on running. All I wanted was silence _._ Can't I get some quiet, once in awhile?

She knows what he means, or thinks she does. He may not be connected to the Matrix, but he's still - mostly - a Time Lord, and he's still part of that collective subconscious hum. Once upon a time, she couldn't imagine how timeblind species survived without it - without the song at the back of your that, the constant _you are not alone._ But this is War-time. And when every other member of your species is fighting and dying and being erased, constantly, _inside your head -_ you can't help but wish for silence, sometimes.

And then he's got -

She swallows, something burning in her throat. "When you say Theta isn't here - "

"I'm not." The Warrior twist around to stare at her, and she still can't seem to focus on his face; all that's there is a mess of paradox and static. "Or maybe he is. Maybe I'm lying. There's so many of me nowadays, can you blame me for losing track?"

(The anti-time just under his voice crackles higher.)

"I don't know," he says. He sounds almost surprised. "Now there's a new feeling."

She takes a careful delicate breath. "Warrior - Theta - Doctor - if you - "

But he's already pushing himself upright, wobbling slightly, hands out, staring at the sunset preoccupied. "Silence. What would it take, for silence? What would it take, to end the War?"

She inhales sharply. "Can you do that?"

"Yes. No. Probably. Who knows?" He turns, not quite here, hands out. "Not without taking the universe with it. Would that be worth it?"

The questions sounds almost plaintive, lost, and worse than that it sounds _serious._ She presses back against the block-transfer wood of the timeship, tries to think. He can't mean it. He can't end the War. If he could do a thing like that, the Enemy would have been gone long ago. And all of it comes out as "I - I don't know."

He stays there for a moment, staring at her - and then he slumps. Drags long pale hands down the face she still can't make herself look at. "No. No it's _not_ worth it, because even if I could survive it _you_ wouldn't." There's an edge of desperation to his voice now. "You wouldn't and Susan wouldn't and Romana wouldn't and Koschei wouldn't and - and I can't stop _loving_ you, Arkytior, I've tried, I've tried for so long and I still _care._ " His voice breaks; the anti-time underneath surges, warping every word. "It still hurts, Arkytior. Every time. Every day, and if I try hard enough I can ignore it but I can never forget it. I still _love_ you."

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

And then he's shifted again _\- again,_ like he's flipping a switch, and this time his endless dark eyes are almost honest. "You helped me. In the Academy. I think you showed me who I was. You saved me. You saved me before I even started running." He pauses, and takes a ragged breath. "I think, if I'd stayed with you, none of this would ever have happened. I needed you."

And then she's dragging herself upright too, and the tears in her eyes fog the world but she doesn't care. "I'm here. I'm here again. I'm so sorry but I'm back and I - "

The grief in his eyes strikes her silent.

There's a sob rising in her throat again, and she still doesn't have any shoes, and there's cold alien stone between her toes. She tries to speak and can't quite make it.

"It's too late," he explains, slowly, brokenly. "I've gone too far. You saved me then, Arkytior, and I will always be grateful, but you can't bring me back."

He moves suddenly, purposefully, and she can't help flinching as the ragged edges of his paradox-ridden biodata brushes hers in the higher-dimensional air. And then he's at the door of his timeship, of the TARDIS, and She opens without a key or a lock.

(Behind the door is only dark; a part of her wonders what he keeps in there, what it is that makes them all so afraid, why he can drive the Enemy back like no other weapon they have.)

There is something like a smile on his face, but it's made of razor blades. "The War doesn't give back what it takes," he says, and takes a dust-gold breath. "They'll come for you once they see I've come back for orders, Arkytior. It won't take long."

He steps into the dark, and it takes her a moment to process that the door is closing - and for a moment all she can think is that he never said goodbye.

(Of course he doesn't. He never liked goodbyes.)

And then the familiar timeship electric wheeze echoes and sparks in the air, and the whirlwind of air displacement starts up, and she almost screams. Throws herself at the receding shape of the blue box, but by the time she lands it's gone -

and she never said -

"I love you," she shrieks, spinning on the empty ground. "I _love_ you, I love you - I love you - Other's grave - Theta, please, I _love_ you, _please_ \- "

But he isn't listening.

[=|=]

The War goes on, and even in the vortex-isolated sheltered halls of Gallifrey, behind the Sky Trenches and the transduction barrier and the supposedly impenetrable break between Inner and Outer Time, even there she can feel it. She can feel the timelines behind them and the worldlines ahead of them shifting, warping, beginning to splinter.

The War goes on, and things only get worse.  
She doesn't see the Warrior again. He stays at the front, receiving orders via his own Matrix connection - which is, funnily enough, also Presidential, although he never properly took up the responsibility, although the Matrix still bows to King and Queen first.  
She's there the day Faction Paradox finally breaks through Inner Time, erasing it's own creation in one final stupendous act of blasphemy; in a possibly even greater stroke of irony, not a single one of the Time Lords the organization had set out to scandalize even seems to notice.  
She's there the Celestis conceptual-reality Mictlan is lost to the Enemy, and the susequent loss of several hundred galaxies as the Enemy takes advantage of its foothold in the greater universe.  
She's there the day they find the truth of what's behind the Enemy - the day of Shroedinger's battlefield and all that is won or lost there, the first attempts at chronoform creation that would later lead to the Moment.  
Things are falling apart, and the War King runs - hiding himself at the end of the universe, it's said, though nobody can seem to be sure how - and Romana takes over as President and General. The Warrior's still here, but growing increasingly erratic, increasingly hard to control, and rumour grows that he's slowly going over to the other side.  
(She dreams.)

[=|=]

Arkytior's in the Presidential office when it happens.

The Lady President and War Queen who was once Romana is sitting at her desk, staring into space, her fingers tapping a delirious broken four-four rhythm on the chair she's sitting on. Arkytior doesn't know why she's been summoned - what's happening in the War at large - and so she stays back and she stays quiet and she waits.

She can suspect, anyway. As President, Romana currently has the highest Matrix clearance available; she's connected to the Matrix in a way that supersedes the standard constant telepathic bond, tied into its center - in fact it's reasonably accurate to say she _is_ the Matrix. She has access to every single circuit and function and being connected to the Matrix, including the Gallifreyans themselves, everything from the lowliest door-opening sensor to the mechanism holding the Eye of Harmony itself in place. Right now, her body may be here, but her mind is faraway along the telepathic relay lines, on the front lines - watching the War through the eyes of the newest day-old soldiers and timeships spinning through higher dimensions, coordinating, keeping it all together. She's doing the War King's job as well as her own; strategist and general and empress all in one. She's holding the Matrix together by sheer force of will.

She's the heart of the Matrix, every signal goes through her, and Arkytior can tell by the blank terrible look in her eyes that right now all of it is screaming.

And then those blue eyes spark with golden pain suddenly, and everything _shifts._

Arkytior can feel the timelines twist as well as any time-sensitive thing; it happens often nowadays, another sign of the increasing instability of Inner Time. She rides it out relatively easy, respiratory bypass activating automatically, hands going up to clutch her head as her past turns itself inside out - a painful distortion, still one she can deal with.

\- but Lady President Romana is plugged into the Matrix, and she can feel _everything_ breaking.

The other Time Lady doesn't even scream; she just topples forward, her mind shutting down under the strain.

Arkytior moves without thinking, pushing away her own confusion to help the President up, but by the time she's moved across the cavernous room Romana's already clawing her way upright, eyes in the distance again. [[I'm fine - ]] she forces out, except that the signal comes straight from the Matrix instead of through the air - the other woman winces, and shakes her head, and takes a shuddering breath. "I'm fine. I'm _fine._ " she repeats.

Arkytior bites her tongue. "Lady President - "

"Shut it," Romana snaps, swaying slightly but upright. She blinks again, and then her eyes finally focus. "That's it, that's the Thirteenth Wave done for."

"Is the battle over?"

"Of course it's not, it's been barely fifteen spans," Romana bites out. She presses the heel of one hand against her forehead, and shakes her head, and moves.

"But you're not…?" Arkytior asks, wishing vaguely she could help.

"Lost cause," Romana says.

Arkytior opens her mouth to protest - the Enemy can't have wiped out an entire Wave in one go, there must be so many soldiers still out there -

"[[Lost _cause,_ ]]" Romana repeats savagely, overlaying it with the same message on command-frequencies - a message that quite literally cannot be argued. Arkytior tries not to flinch.

And then Romana cuts it out instead, shaking her head. "No. I'm sorry. Arkytior - your name is Arkytior?"

 _The Dreamer,_ Arkytior wants to say, and nods instead.

"I don't like you," says Romana cleanly. She stands straight now, leaning back against her desk slightly, staring Arkytior down. "And I judge it highly improbable that you like me. I don't like the way you stay out of danger and out of the way, I don't like the way you pretend that none of this affects you, I don't like the way you seem to think the world _owes_ you anything when you haven't worked a day in your life, never done anything but be a pretty piece of statuary." Her eyes are hard and clear. "I don't like that you used to know the Doctor, either, I'll be honest about that. He never _quite_ looked at me, you know - he never quite looked at everyone. Even then. He lies to everyone, including himself. Mostly himself." She takes a slow breath. "I hated that even when it was us, together, he'd still sometimes think of you."

Arkytior holds her breath and doesn't give anything away. "Did he?"

"Of course he did," Romana snaps. "Don't be so damned naive, he's been in love with you for millennia, of course he did. That's another thing I don't like." Her gaze is almost clinical now. "What is it you like to call yourself? The Dreamer?"

Arkytior digs fingernails into her palms - of course the Matrix would know, it's only to be expected, she can't panic. It isn't her father she's talking to. "...Yes."

"Don't dream," Romana says harshly. " _Do._ "

And then she's grabbed Arkytior's hand, completely disregarding the scandalous skin-on-skin contact - and is dragging her away down the room, pulling her down, talking fast. "The War is going badly, Dreamer. You must know that - I don't think even you could ignore that." Arkytior catches the edge of a telepathic signal in the air; the wall behind the desk opens up cleanly as they approach, turning into an archway with a small and considerably more cluttered room behind it. "Matrix predictions aren't reliable anymore, with the Enemy asserting alternate reality, but we can all feel it anyway, can't we?" She turns, letting go of Arkytior's hand, pushing her down into a skeletal chair at the edge of a room. "We're not going to win this. The best we can hope for is a draw. Whatever happens - whoever comes out of this - Gallifrey isn't going to survive as gods of reality anymore."

Arkytior watches, nervous, as Romana pulls something - a wireframe network of sparks and metal and glass - off the floor. She doesn't try to move away; whatever's going to happen, will happen, whatever she does. There's something strangely beautiful about the tableau; the Lady President on her hands and knees, black hair falling forward, ornate white Presidental robes dusty and soot-stained - blue eyes narrow and preoccupied, and something unbelievably stubborn in the set of her shoulders. _Holding Gallifrey together with sheer will._ Romana's hands are dirty, blood under her fingernails and the scars of anti-time and paradox embedded in her biodata, but she's still strong. "I see," Arkytior says, eventually.

Romana pulls herself upright, suddenly focusing on the other Time Lady again. "And when we're gone - not if, _when -_ do you know who's going to come out of this alive? Do you know which of us - which one single one of us - still has a chance?"

Arkytior swallows. "I don't know." It's a lie.

There's something almost exasperated in the way Romana tilts her head. "Oh, you really don't know him well at _all,_ do you."

Arkytior looks at the President sidelong, uncertain. "The Doctor."

"Yes," says Romana tiredly. "Yes. The Doctor, or the Warrior, or the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, Time's Champion, the Eighth Man Bound. Whatever you want to call him." There's a note of something that could almost be pride in her voice now. " _Nothing_ kills the Doctor."

"When the Time Lords are all gone," Arkytior repeats.

"Yes. Hold this." Arkytior accepts the tangle of circuitry automatically; Romana waves a vague hand in her direction. "There are better ways to do this, but it's harder without a timeship to do the calculations, and we can't trust the Matrix anymore. It's conceptual space, there are turned Celestis agents everywhere." She lifts a four-foot long serrated sword out of the clutter, considers it for a moment, chucks it at the wall in a surprisingly practiced motion; it stays embedded there, quivering. "Do you know what that means?"

"He'll be - alone," Arkytior tries.

"Yes." Romana turns, and for a moment Arkytior thinks her eyes are wet, but there's steel under it. "He'll be alone. And you - you must know him enough for that, you must know that that wouldn't end well."

Arkytior knows.

(She remembers, in the hills of Cadon, just outside the Academy - hand in hand mind against mind twining through each other - and she remembers that telltale undercurrent of restlessness, the need to _run,_ and she remembers why it's there. She remembers the darkness he's running from. She remembers the Warrior, and she remembers when it caught up with him.)

( _You saved me._ )

"He's alone now," she points out.

Romana pauses, almost surprised, and she softens just a little "Yes. That's right."

Arkytior takes a breath, very carefully. "You're saying he needs someone." She tilts her head, eyes narrowed, trying to get a good look at the thing in the center of the room. "That's a chameleon arch. You said - when the _Time Lords_ are all gone."

Maybe it's a bitter kind of smile, maybe it isn't; either way, Romana's moving again. "You're cleverer than you like to pretend, aren't you?"

Arkytior shrugs. "Are you going to - " She's almost scared to ask the question. 'If he needs someone, and if - " she reasons, careful - "well, I was Heir to Gallifrey. I could - I could take the Presidency. And you could - "

The look in Romana's eyes stops her.

There's a kind of sheer _power_ there, and in that moment Arkytior understands; The Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar will _never_ abandon this planet, will never abandon her people, will never run as the War King did; whatever it takes. No matter if it kills her, and it will, and she knows it.

She is not the Doctor. She will never, ever run.

But the Dreamer just might.

A kind of agreement passes between them, right there; a grudging kind of respect, even. They both know how this ends. They both know what they have to do.

Romana moves first; places a crown of metal and thorns and electricity on Arkytior's head, swears distractedly as something snaps, connecting fat sinewy wires with deft fingers that barely shake at all. "This is what the Master did, too; this is the only way to get out of the War. You're going to be human. You remember humans? They're a timeblind mindblind species in the Mutter's Spiral, spread across a few galaxies at their height. Cute, not especially clever, can be really astonishingly tough when you least expect them to be."

"The Doctor likes them," Arkytior confirms.

"That's them," Romana says through gritted teeth, some kind of sonic device held in her mouth. She takes it back out, starts soldering something together just above Arkytior's head. (She can smell hair burning. She doesn't comment.) "Arkytior translates to Rose" - the alien word thick and clumsy compared to the fluid silver syllables of Gallifreyan - "so we'll call you that. Already picked out a likely-looking breeding couple to transplant you to, names Jackie and Pete Tyler." She steps back, considers. "Rose Tyler, growing up in London in the late twentieth century. That should work out well."

"How are you sure he'll find me?" Arkytior asks, and sits up straight, careful not to disturb the web of technology on her head.

"Oh, he _always_ does," the War Queen says bitterly. She closes her eyes, lips moving in a mantra Arkytior can't see - opens them again. "Bloody stupid fixed-point Other's-taken paradox-tainted little _Loom_ glitch - "

Arkytior stops her, hand going out, carefully balanced and yet urgent, just before she hits the switch. "No - wait - "

Romana stops. Narrows her eyes - shakes her head slightly, as if trying to get water out of her ears, but Arkytior can tell from here than it doesn't help. The Matrix still screaming. The Thirteenth Wave dying one by one by one. "Yes. What."

Arkytior bites her tongue. "What about you?"

The War Queen looks very very young, suddenly - and Arkytior realizes with a start that she's almost twice the age of the Lady President, that she and Theta were at the Academy nearly a millennium before Romana was even Loomed. She's on her third regeneration, and Arkytior on her first, but that doesn't mean much. The woman, the young Time Lady, swallows, but the steel is still there in her eyes. Exhausted and terrified but still holding it all together, still keeping up the hyper-efficient facade, still fighting.

"I wait until you've been turned," says Romana, and her voice only barely wavers. "I take the Presidential Ship and I give you to Jackie Tyler and I convince her that you've always been there, that you should be there. I hide the last Time Lady and Rassilon's Heir, and I make sure you're hidden well, and then I come back."

"To the War."

"To the War in Heaven," she repeats, toneless, "and then I fight until the Enemy comes up the steps of the Panopticon and tears down the statues of the Founders and I fight until they're at the Eye of Harmony and I fight them until I'm alone in the hivemind, facing an alternate history with a sword and a _will._ I make it happen, because nobody else will. I fight until it kills me, or until the Warrior does, whichever comes first." She closes her eyes, and takes a long smooth breath, and holds it; respiratory bypass kicking in, calming chemicals in her bloodstream, until the Matrix stabilizes around both of them, going hard and ice-cold and powerful again.

"Goodbye," says Arkytior, softly. "Good luck."

"Just one more thing," Romana hisses, the pain obvious in her voice, blinking back useless tears. (Holding it all together.) "Maybe I'm wrong, and he won't survive, and then you'll be the last one left, okay?"

Arkytior nods, not daring to speak.

"You better damn well make yourself worth it," says Romana, and hits the switch.

There is pain, and there is light, and there is nothing after that.

[=|=]

Rose Tyler is nineteen years old when she meets the Doctor, and her life changes with one word:

" _Run._ "


	3. Awake

**Most of this chapter written by anarchitect, who once again bails me out when I can't make the scene flow. The next chapter deals with the End of Time and will be written mostly by me. For those of you following** ** _When Silence Falls_** **, the next chapter will be posted either this evening or tomorrow.**

 **Awake**

She is sunlight spun of gold, and for a short blessed moment she thinks of nothing at all.

And then the light fades - the locket falling from nerveless fingers - and everything hits her at once.

Something at the back of her head that's at once terrifyingly new and completely natural surges, trying to get the whirlwind gold in her head under control - and she's suddenly and disconcertingly _aware_ that she can _feel_ her heartsbeat, could slow it down or speed it up or shut it off entirely and there's an entire world a hundred spectrums that she _shouldn't_ be able to see but she _can_ she can see _Time_ and - _not breathing how can she not be_ and _this is silly_ and _the War_ and _theta_ and _doctor_ and _he's dead he's dead_ which morphs into _they're dead_ and she realizes what's she's missing, and that's when the world shatters all at

 _ **E**_

She claps her hands over her ears and screams.

There's a moment there where she loses track of herself - lost in the endless terrible all-consuming _nothing,_ the silence so loud she thinks she's gone blind and deaf, the hole left where Gallifrey should have been - (that quiet constant hivemind-hum at the back of your head the _you are not alone_ except you _are,_ there is _nothing there,_ how can there be _nothing there_ )

Her mind snaps in two.

And holds.

She blinks her eyes open, vision still tinged with gold, as thought-tracks divide and divide again - _a gallifreyan mind is capable of holding multiple decision paths at once,_ one of them, one of her, part of her, supplies, and most of her is vaguely confused that it even needs to be mentioned. Somewhere she holds on to the silence - holds it back - and somewhere she chases the gold to the back of her head, and somewhere a part of her fights the _what am i_ confusion, leaving her space to _think._

She takes a shaky careful breath. (Respiratory bypass clicks off easily, and she hadn't even noticed herself activating it.) Pulls herself back upright.

The room seems - _smaller._ It takes her a moment to figure out that this isn't because she's changed, but because it doesn't quite _mean_ anything anymore. It's a human place, and a human planet, that she shared with a half-human - _Theta._

The grief hits her all over again, just as painful the second time, and she sucks in a broken breath. Theta, her Theta, dead and gone. And she never even knew she loved him - no, she loved him, but her love was small and bounded and _human -_ or is that all wrong?

No.

No.

Things rebuild themselves in her head, meshing back together, and even if she isn't certain of who she is she's certain of this.

She loves the Doctor.

She loved him when she was human and when he was human and she loved him when they were more than that and when they were less, and she always will love him. That much, she can always be sure of.

She _loves_ him.

And she will find him.

Even the silence pales a little next to that.

It's only then that it occurs to her to wonder what she even _is_ , now.

She looks down quickly - she's wearing the same clothes that Rose was wearing, but they don't quite fit anymore, and the hair that drapes down over her eyes isn't blonde. The artron energy crackle in the air tells her what, she finds, she already knows; she's regenerated. (Third incarnation, and barely a few millennia old! Except of course the Doctor is on his tenth now - or eleventh, she supposes, counting _her_ halfling Theta - or more than that, perhaps, since she's been away.) Maybe it's post-regeneration loopiness or maybe it's a coping mechanism against the silence or maybe it's simply denial, but she finds a laugh bubbling in her throat - spinning on young-again feet, watching time flow around her with Gallifreyan-again eyes. Arkytior. She is Arkytior. She's the Dreamer. And she's free.

(And Rose - who is her, but not all of her, and yet more than her, and she can worry about that later - laughs too.)

She runs her hands down her new body once - and then glances upward, at the other door, her mouth opening. Bathroom, which means mirror, which means reflection. Which means fun.

She stares at the unfamiliar face there critically - not bad at all, really. Flaming red hair, freckles, dark green eyes, a small soft mouth with slightly crooked teeth - she runs her tongue along the contours, remembering (new teeth, that's weird) - ever so slightly taller than her last body but not as tall as the first, light-footed. She moves different now. She's regenerated once before, of course, but she wasn't really _aware_ of it, so this feels like the first time, strange and new and glorious.

She cocks her head. The girl in the mirror does the same thing, and then grins, tongue between her teeth. "So you still do that then," she starts, and - oh.

That's different.

She frowns, analyzing the patterns, scientific. Celtic accent. No, Irish. That's weird. Hang on, why is she even speaking English?

"That's not right at all," she opinions haughtily, and this time it comes out in Gallifreyan - and _that_ at least is proper Capitoline. Not that horrible rural Cadonin accent Theta always dragged around. "Much better," she decides, and grins again. She wishes vaguely that she had something better to wear - but Gallifreyan robes are useless for anything but bureaucracy, and she's not going to wear the same clothes for centuries on end like he sometimes does, the adorable moron. Rose's leather jacket and black jeans will have to do, for now. Until she gets back to the TARDIS.

Which is when she notices the gold.

Not the regeneration-artron - that's long dissipated, and even the fragments still floating around her head are just mist. (Because she's actually regenerated the way you're supposed to _do_ it, whereas he's a bloody idiot who gets himself killed in extraordinarily creative and traumatizing ways. What was the story Koschei (when he was in his beardless phase, with the rosette) told her, about the Doctor's eighth face, and a human hospital, and a delayed regeneration resulting in an identity collapse? And his ninth face, _her_ first Doctor, or the human her, and the - )

There's the flicker again.

She turns to look behind her, but there's nothing but tiled bathroom wall. Frowns. Sighs.

It takes a bit of effort - the structure of the universe seems to have turned itself inside out since she last tried this - but she makes it; drops her mind out of conventional reality and gets a proper pandimensional look at the room, at the way its timeline intersects with the tapestry of life that's the planet at large. The gold traces back through this room, back at least fifty years, getting stronger as it goes; definitely a retroactive effect of some kind, and a scent she _knows_. Arkytior of the Time Lords traces it forward, to the present day, and finds the room engulfed in a bloom of gold only a few minutes into the future - timelines fuzzy with distortion - and then back a little and she -

Stops.

stands there in the bathroom, apparently frozen, staring.

And looks down.

There is gold burning in her bones.

Which is when she recognizes it; the glare of a free chronoform, the tracks left by looking into the heart of a TARDIS. The Bad Wolf, hidden in her hearts.

It must have been there for years, for decades, she realizes distantly. Except she was human, and she couldn't see (not _see_ , really, it's so much more than that, it's hearfeelstasteknow) time then. Couldn't see herself. Couldn't see the way home, hidden inside her all the time. (Did the Doctor know? He must have known. He must have known she'd always find her way home, that she was still tied to the TARDIS's timeship heart.)

She raises her arms, careful, grinning still - pulls at the strands of probability around her, clearing a path to the world-walls, following that invisible line to the last living timeship -

And freezes.

There's something she's forgotten.

A moment later, she's in the bedroom again. Staring at the wall. At the note written there, in a shaky-but-familiar human hand.

She doesn't really need to read it; she remembers what she wrote there, a few minutes and a lifetime ago. She does anyway. Takes it off the wall with careful delicate fingers; holds it trapped there for a long moment.

And then the moment breaks, and she lets it fall.

Arkytior spins in place, turning away, the paper forgotten on the floor. Finds that line again - that invisible connection, that bond - and _pulls_.

It all hits her at once.

[[[ _/ myheartmyThiefmyROSE foundOneSel_ f ((allaloneallalone) (silence)) _fINd yOU ||itisreturning||_ don't/let/me/fal _l myWolf come home {knockknockknock} needsmethetaneedsmethetaneedsme ]]]_

 _ **A**_

[[[ _my Wolf RISE._ ]]]

 _I am the Bad Wolf._

The words are song and fire and pure artron power.

 _I create myself, out of nothing, out of all that ever was._

The gold dances in her hair and down lithe limbs and now that she is truly herself again she can see the real scope of it - pandimensional, pantemporal, endless and beginningless and perfect.

 _Theta?_ she whispers, eyes wide and blank, almost vulnerable. Tracing his broken timelines back.

Her mouth opens; something hardens in her eyes.

 _Theta, I'm coming home._

There's a wind rising, the light so bright even a Time Lord would find themself forced to look away, and then with snap and a jerk there is nothing at all.


	4. The End of Time

The End of Time

Everythin .

(out)

[gold in her hearts and down her throats and pressing in all around her hot too-hot too loud and still the silence but the Bad Wolf doesn't stop for anything as small as]

[pain]

(she's used to this. she's done this before. if she could make it through the world walls human and helpless and only a dimension cannon to keep her moving she can damn well make it through now, when she is a goddess)

[crack.]

And then the gold fades away and the pressure vanishes and she's stumbling forward, the glow-wild Wolf gone from her head, something blessedly solid under her feet. She stabilizes automatically, subconsciously, blinks away the shadowy-lightning-strike afterimage; can't do anything more than that. Her head is full of -

It's not quite real, but it's so close it hurts; she can hear it echoing along the long labyrinth timelines of the remnants of the War. The hivemind. The wound is still too new in her head, too painful, a good fourth of her mind busy simply with keeping the shock-hurt-fear-grief contained -

And it's there again. Sudden. Unexpected; it knocks her off-kilter even now. (She wonders, after so many centuries, what it's doing to the Doctor.)

The Doctor - (warrior / theta / bringer of darkness, his timeline-signature clear as the silver electric scent of storm)

Her head snaps up.

She's in a room - massive, vaguely cathedral-like, haphazard tables and desks and what looks to be a - radiation chamber ? - along one wall - except that it's warped, deep down-under reality. A dangerous-looking contraption in the center of the room holds a white point star, twisting the fabric of existence inside-out and upside-down until it reveals - Gallifrey.

Not Gallifrey in its entirety - that too, but it's further away, dampened - but the Matrix is in this room, and with it its founder and Lord.

Arkytior sees her father, on white steps, looking as though he'd never died, and freezes.

And then it suddenly stops mattering.

Because Theta. Right there. Right in front of her, grief-broken and sharp-edged and on the edge of falling - but not the Warrior, the Doctor, her pinstriped idiot Doctor. She loved him, as Rose, but she never really saw him; never saw the brutal alien darkness that he fights so hard to hide, hiding just under his skin day and night. She sees him now. Sees the Doctor, and Koschei-the-Master with cracked desperate laughing [insanity] radiating out of him is there too -

She wants to hold him. She's opening her mouth to call for him. She takes a step forward, out of the shadows, sparks of gold dispersing behind her. She - hesitates.

(The Doctor stares forward at her father, not seeing her, and she can feel the Warrior so-close-and-waiting until he - )

And then Rassilon's gaze climbs up over the Doctor's head and focuses on her.

She freezes - a moment of confusion knocks her off-kilter, because they'd thrown him out, what happened to Romana, did he get reLoomed all over again - how can he even be here what happened to the time lock - why can she feel the sharp painful edges of the War encroaching on this world - and then he's smiling. Holds one steel-gloved out as imperiously as ever, elevated, arrogant. "Arkytior I must admit, you are the one person I did not expect to see here today; however, it is rather fitting. The three of you together once again."

(he never would use the title she'd preferred to use)

And everything freezes.

The Master turned at 'Arkytior,' so fast she can see the air glitch behind him, bones flashing under his skin. The Doctor is much, much slower, so slow she can feel Time stretch around them, and then his eyes meet hers, and the recognition is already there, and so is the darkness.

(the pain - and she saw it as Rose but now she understands it and it's dizzying in its depth wild and desperate and still grieving, and then they see her - )

(and she has to say something, anything)

She can't think, can barely breathe, trapped in the Doctor's eyes, and so when she feels herself take a breath to speak it's almost a surprise; millennia of protocol trapped in her spine saver her. "I must admit, Lord President, that I hardly expected to see you here either," and she realizes with a dull kind of amazement that she sounds almost confident, the wavering stutter barely noticeable, back straight. "I'm certain you will understand that I can't be pleased about this turn of events. Did Romana really reLoom you for the end of the War? Or did the Capitol finally turn on her?"

The Doctor cuts her off.

He's frozen as motionless as everyone else, radiating [disbelief] and [desperation] and a bloody sickening kind of [hope], and when he speaks it's one word. Barely whispered, and yet it cuts through the air like silence.

"How."

She can't help but flinch.

"How," he repeats, quiet and delicate and broken. "You can't have survived. It's not possible. I would've - known, I would - "

He stops sharply, suddenly, shakes his head. It's a blind compulsive movement, jerky and off-kilter, a denial. If there's anybody else left in the room, she can't see them; the world has narrowed, focused, stereoscoped down to two people and nothing else. The Doctor, and his Rose.

"It was Romana who did it," she hears herself whisper. "Who made me human. She said you'd need me. She promised you'd find me, and you did." She smiles, a shaky sad thing. "You took my hand and told me to run."

The Master gets it; whistles delightedly off to the left; she's still looking at the Docor, watching the recognition bloom in his eyes.

Shock and surprise and-and-

her mind splits and splits again (stumble forward hands on her head and every breath is golden fire) and calculates, burning artron-gold and screaming (no not screaming but howling and she is so, so afraid) and she doesn't remember it being like this the first time but she was human the first time and-and-

Everything snaps back into place with a shudder and a brief golden flash.

The Doctor's at her side.

"Regeneration sickness," he murmurs, pulls her upright. He doesn't quite touch her; steadying her carefully, but only through the thick leather of her jacket. Just barely not enough for touch-telepathy to register, and the way he moves tells her he must know it. And then he's stepping back, eyes unreadable, and she wonders distantly what he's hiding from her.

(if I try hard enough I can ignore it but I can never forget it I still love you Arkytior)

"Only to be expected," she manages. "It'll pass." And then her gaze skitters away from him again, at Rassilon, at the Master; she moves back toward the Doctor instinctively, falling back into Rose's old habits. "...What's going on?"

He jerks his head toward the Master, easily, anger in his eyes. "He's the link. Pulling Gallifrey back into the sky, into this sky." It's not much of an answer, but combined with the white point star and the distinct unrealness of Rassilon and everything around him - as if he's not quite here yet, not quite finished - it tells her what she needs to now.

"Come to me, Arkytior." It's Rassilon, sanctimonious, regal, hands outstretched. "Stand at my right hand, and witness the Time Lords' ascension to perfection. Stand with me as I enact the Final Sanction. You are the Keeper of my Legacy; it is only fitting that you witness our greatest triumph."

And oh, he is just like she remembers; arrogant and bigoted but persuasive; his every word is spoken with the sheer confidence of someone who's had every last circuit of the Matrix and therefore almost all of the known universe under their control for longer than most beings can comprehend. A person for whom absolute power isn't just mundane but a part of the natural world order. And it takes all she has to push through centuries of habit and - break free.

She realizes, the world flickering breathless, that she's no longer connected to the Matrix; that it has no hold on her. That he has no hold on her. A real renegade, now, and free of everything that held her back.

(don't dream, do)

She is the Dreamer and she is Arkytior but she is more than that, she is also Rose, and Rose asked the right questions. Rose was human. Rose was unpredictable, and cheerful, and free.

Rose was good.

"What is this Final Sanction?" she asks, standing tall and resolute, not bending to anyone. (More than Time Lady. Time Lady, with that little bit of human mixed in, and Gallifrey holds no power over her. )

"A paradox," the Doctor answers, ice and fire and blood thick in his voice, the mask of glass he wears splintering and cracking with every word. "A paradox so strong, so absolute, that it will rip the Web of Time apart. History will never have existed."

"We will ascend," Rassilon repeats, the dream so strong in his eyes, she almost believes it. "Ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone, free from the weight of our bodies."

"And the rest of the universe will be destroyed!" the Doctor cries, desperate. His eyes flick from Arkytior to the Master to Rassilon and back, quick and trapped. "Don't you see? That's what they were planning, at the end of the War. I had to stop them. I had to end it all. Every moment in Time was already burning, and they were going to rip it apart. I couldn't let that happen!"

(and oh. Oh Menti Celesti. She can see the Warrior just under the skin, can see him push it back, can hear the hiss-whine of anti-time so close beneath his voice and she almost screams.)

"Romana knew," she says, not knowing why but knowing she must say something, must keep the Warrior from coming out. He turns to look at her, wheeling, and she has to brace herself to avoid stepping back - and at the same time she wants nothing more than to hold them and never never never let go. "Everyone knew. That we were dying. She said - if somebody survives - it'll be you. She was - " and the last word is quiet horror, for all that she tries to hide it. "She was right."

She can't see the Doctor's reaction - can't make herself look at what he does then - and then Rassilon's speaking and her eyes drag around to look at him without leaving her any choice in the matter.

"Stand with me, Arkytior," He intones. "Stand with me now, in Gallifrey's hour of greatness. The renegades are nothing, they are not worth your Time, not worth the ground you stand on. You are-"

(Arkytior and Dreamer and Rose)

"No." Ice and steel stiffen her voice into something sharp and cutting, and she rears her head, delighting in the freedom it even now. "No. I am the Dreamer, Lord President, and you will erase me from your Matrix and forget I ever existed." She stares him in the eyes, tall and proud and imperious. "Don't dream, do. I choose freedom, Lord President, and you have no power over me now."

And suddenly, very suddenly, things come together.

She's a strong telepath. Never achieved the clarity others could manage - Ushas beat her hands down every time - but strong enough for this. The white point star, and the delicate unstable threads of the timeslines bending under the encroaching war -

Calculation complete.

She doesn't care, suddenly, how long it's been since she's seen him, about the Warrior under his skin; she loves the Warrior, too, after all. Her hand shoots out and clamps down on his fingers. Startled he tries to jerk away but she's already signalling - not an invasion, but an invitation, a message.

[the diamond, doctor, shoot the diamond] she projects fiercely - and the next instant he's slammed down his shields hard enough that the silence echoes, the skin-on-skin contact as meaninglessly empty as it would be in any mindblind human thing, but she can feel the simple tension in his fingers anyway. He heard.

"Have you gone mad?" Rassilon exclaims, startled into almost-silence by her refusal. "Has the isolation - to deny me -"

(she is Arkytior and the Dreamer and Rose and she is-she is-)

(she is glowing and golden and powerful she is)

"No!" Arkytior, the Dreamer, shakes herself, stares at Rassilon. Spits it, and the Doctor doesn't move but he doesn't take his hand away either, slowly softening. "No. The War is over. Not for you, not quite yet, but to the rest of the universe it is. You've lost, Lord President, and there's nothing you can do to change it!"

And then the Doctor speaks. "Arkytior." (It's the first time he's said her name, her real name, since the Warrior.) She half turns toward him, but her eyes still skitter away from his face - focusing on their enemies instead, the Master leaning against the white-point-star contraption and grinning like a mad thing. "Arkytior, I'm going to - I've been told I'll die here." The way he says it makes it clear that it's no nonsense prediction.

She - Rassilon could kill him, of course, will kill him if only for spite, and that cannot-must not happen, she will not let that happen. Theta will not die, not on her watch, not when she's finally found him again.

Not when she never said she loved him.

And maybe he won't want her, maybe he was lying, during the War, and maybe it doesn't matter anyway. She doesn't really care, not right now. There are more important things.

"I can arrange that," Rassilon says, and it takes her a moment to realize it's only been a blink since the Doctor said he is going to die and, and-

"Take me with you," the Master suddenly pleads. "When you ascend, take me with you!"

"You are diseased," Rassilon answers, almost bored. "I have no more use for you."

"Then kill me instead," and the madness has receded just a touch, it's Koschei who steps around the Doctor to face her father, and she realizes suddenly he's doing it for her.

It hits her hard -

(here: koschei covering for her when she snuck out to meet theta in the hills above cadon, taking the blame, opening the doors for her when she went out so the Matrix wouldn't register that she'd been through)

(here: koschei spreads contradictory rumours, many and varied and cutting and most of them focused on him, as long as the attention comes away from her, as long as rassilon doesn't hear)

(here: koschei stands in front of them both and his bones flicker underneath his skin and it is obvious, so obvious that he is already dying)

No.

NO.

"It will be my pleasure," Rassilon says.

(she is the-)

"The diamond, do it now!" she screams, sees the Doctor moving, and Koschei is still going to die but she will not let Rassilon kill him mad and afraid and alone. She is the-

(I am the BAD WOLF)

I AM THE BAD WOLF

I = = F

Gold light burns screaming through her mind leaving fire in its wake, and it is her voice but it is not her own and the words it says come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

"I am the Bad Wolf, and I protect the ones I love."

Then the diamond shatters and Rassilon's glove misfires, and there's a great rush of wind and a scream and then nothing at all.

[=|=]

The Dreamer, who-was-and-is-Arkytior, wakes up.

(Well, except 'waking up' would imply that she was asleep, and Time Lords almost never really sleep. Their biology is designed that way-more endurance, faster reflexes, stronger and faster and smarter than any human ever could be. Doze, yes, but not sleep. It's too vulnerable.)

She's babbling. She knows she's babbling. The silence is back in her head, and there is a scream trapped in her throat that will never be free.

She takes a ragged shaky breath and opens her eyes - no, they were already open, blinking back the gold-dark buzz, focuses.

The Doctor's standing there. Facing her. Staring down at the body on the floor, Koschei motionless but smiling, free (and it was her who did it she took the drums away) and Theta stares at his dead best friend and doesn't even cry.

She tries to move, shakily, and is almost surprised when she manages a step forward; she's been - frozen, or something, frozen and glowing and gold. The Bad Wolf blowing away, artron-dust on the wind, leaving her free and awake once more.

"Koschei?" she ventures faintly, coming forward carefully (trying to block out the silence still) but almost before the word is ended the Doctor's shaking his head.

"Gone," he says, distantly. "All gone."

She knows what he means. Gallifrey is dead and burnt and broken. Again.

"I'm sorry," she says softly, and there's really nothing more that can be said.

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

The Doctor stiffens, flinches, freezes.

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

She turns slowly, the moment seeming to stretch like taffy, like the web of time bending-screeching-breaking under the weight of paradox -

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

Her eyes meet his.

"Hello?" says the old man, uncertainly, and she's sure he's familiar but not quite sure what from. "Hello - I'm in here."

She frowns, preoccupied - and then recognition dawns. "W - Wilf! You're Donna's grandfather, aren't you? I thought I recognized your voice." The smile is unexpected and sunny and almost bright enough to block out the silence. (The Doctor behind her - still hasn't said anything, but her regen-addled head won't let her focus on it, focus on anything. Thoughts split and race and join together, knocking her off-balance over and over again.)

Wilf looks nervous. "Do I know you?"

"You did, once," she tells him. "A very long time ago - and yet no time at all, now, for me." She pauses, focusing on his timelines, drawing long and many-colored through history - leading him here. "It hasn't been long, from your perspective. I used your computer-you didn't have a webcam. You tried to shoot a Dalek with a paintball gun." A grin flickers on the corners of her lips, and she shakes her head.

Wilf stares. "But-you don't look the same."

She opens her mouth to explain, and the Doctor cuts her off, his voice hollow and empty and meaningless. "Four knocks."

Wilf looks almost taken aback; she half-turns, looking for him, hands up against the light. "Doctor…?"

He's standing there, limp and loose, staring at the glass cage behind her. "He will knock four times. That's what she said. That's what they - I survived it, Arkytior. I survived it again. All over again. And still this."

Wilf shakes his head, pats at the glass, and the Dreamer gets the feeling he's afraid but she's not sure why, not getting it yet. "If you could just pop in and let me out - "

Oh. That's funny. Does he not realize? "The radiation chamber is unstable," she tells him gently, sadly. Humans can't see these things, they can't see their death coming. "One touch of a button, and the chamber will flood. Even the sonic will set it off." Her smile is comforting. "There's no way to save you, I'm afraid."

"Yes there is."

She turns again, uncertain all over again. Her eyes flicker to his - but she doesn't know him well enough, can't figure out what he's thinking anymore. "Well, not unless somebody takes his place, but - "

And then she gets it.

"Oh."

" Just leave me, Doctor," Wilf tries, but she can only hear him from very far away. "I'm an old man. I'm not worth it."

"Right," says her Theta, vicious and easy and so much grief in his eyes. "Right. That's what I'll do, then. Because you had to go in there, didn't you? You had to go and get stuck, oh yes, because that's who you are."

Arkytior frowns, sure that there's something wrong but not sure what. "I could - I'm in the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle. I could do it. I could survive. You've used so many already. It's only - "

The Doctor is already shaking his head. "And what happens if you don't survive? If it's too much for the healing factor? If you die before the artron energy resets you die, Arkytior, there's no regeneration twice within the same cycle, you'd be dead for good." And then he snaps his head up to stare straight at her, eyes wild, daring her to deny it. "But he's just a human. Practically at the end of his lifespan anyway. Not remotely important. But me? I could - "

And then he spins, roars it, broken. "I could do so much more. So - much - more!"

It hurts, it hurts to look at him, and then she's rushing forward, blocking him off, blocking herself off. Wilf is just a human, just a primitive, no matter that he's Donna's granddad and he's helped the Doctor; it's not worth the regeneration of either of the last Time Lords in existence. She tells herself so, and she's not sure why some part of herself is so desperately pushing it away, when she knows it's true. "Theta," she's saying, "he's right, somebody else will come along - please, just leave him." She glances back to Wilf, almost as an afterthought. "I'm sorry."

Wilf tries to muster a smile; it collapses on his face, painful but resigned. "No, it's alright, missy. I understand."

The Doctor isn't quite looking at her. "It's not fair."

"Theta, it's going to be okay," she says, coming up close, not quite daring to take his hand.

He sighs once, closes his eyes, rocks backward. "Oh - Oh Arkytior, I've lived too long." And then something almost imperceptible shifts, and he's holding out one ungloved hand to her, a plea, a last call on the cliff's edge. "Help me?"

"Of course," she says instantly, and takes the hand without thinking - and then - and then he swings upright easily and their eyes meet and she realizes. (Too late.)

She's just regenerated, she's vulnerable and tired, her mind still reorganizing itself. Her shields are down. And neither of them are wearing gloves. The skin-on-skin contact like an open door, completely and utterly defenseless, her mind just waiting to be attacked - to be - shut down -

"I'm sorry, Arkytior," she hears, and then there's a kind of pressure and everything goes black.


End file.
